Unintentional muscle movements of the human body, or human tremors, can occur in individuals suffering from neurological motion disorders including but not limited to Parkinson's Disease (PD) and Essential Tremor (ET). ET is the most common neurological motion disorder affecting as many as 10 million individuals in the United States and 270 million individuals worldwide. Due to the debilitating muscle movements associated with this disease, individuals with ET have difficulty in performing many daily functions such as eating and drinking. As a result, these individuals often suffer from social isolation, depression/anxiety, and an overall reduced Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL).
Unintentional muscle movements of the human body can also occur in healthy individuals. These unintentional muscle movements are often exacerbated by environmental factors and situations that lead to fatigue, stress, nervousness, etc. For example, a military serviceperson may experience unintentional muscle movements while performing a surgical operation on the battlefield due to stress and nervousness and this may result in decreased performance.
For individuals suffering from neurological motion disorders, a variety of treatment options exist. Pharmacological treatments vary in effectiveness, can lead to severe side effects and are unable to slow or stop disease progression. Surgical procedures, such as Thalamotomy and thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) can be expensive, dangerous, and limited in availability. Non-invasive solutions, such as physically grounded tremor suppression devices, physically force a person's tremor to cease but require complex and costly structures, cause user discomfort and cannot differentiate between intended and unintended movements.
These issues limit the adoption of these treatments to select neurological motion disorder cases. Also, these treatments are often not available for healthy individuals suffering from human tremor. Thus, for the majority of individuals that suffer from human tremor, there is a strong need for a non-invasive solution that overcomes the above issues. The present invention addresses such a need.